https://www.kiefelphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Fonkoze-2010-514.jpg10631600adminhttps://www.kiefelphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Kiefel-Logo-web-300x53.pngadmin2018-01-13 11:18:422018-01-13 19:41:06Dignity and Strength of Haitian People

https://www.kiefelphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Cambodia-301-1.jpg9461400adminhttps://www.kiefelphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Kiefel-Logo-web-300x53.pngadmin2017-12-19 19:40:252017-12-19 19:40:25Changing the World One Image at a Time Darcy Kiefel World Photographer

‘In several abandoned warehouses near the main train station in Belgrade, Serbia, roughly 1 200 refugees, predominantly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, are surviving in shocking hygienic conditions and low temperatures.

Insufficiently dressed, they are sleeping under grey blankets and burning practically any flammable materials, including plastic and polystyrene, in improvised brick stoves to keep warm. As a consequence, the smoke-filled halls are full of very acrid, bad air that is almost unbreathable. In addition to frostbite, many of the residents also are experiencing breathing difficulties as a result of smoke inhalation. Most have lived in the abandoned warehouses for more than four months.

“Sometimes at night I can’t feel my feet, but I do my best to sleep despite that,” said Bilal, a 14-year-old unaccompanied minor, orginally from Afghanistan, who has been living at the station for the last four months. Most refugees in the warehouses say they have attempted to cross countless times, only to be beaten and pushed back into Serbia. “The smugglers took all my money, the others beat me,” says Bilal, who says he fled the violence happening near his home in Afghanistan after his father was murdered. Nevertheless, an estimated 1 200 males, including roughly 300 boys who are in Serbia without any other family members, are camped in the abandoned, smoke-filled warehouses near the main train station. “It’s not good here, and I’m absolutely on my own. We’re all ill,” 13-year-old Kochel of Afghanistan told us.’

There is a Garden in every Childhood
an Enchanted Place where Colors are Brighter,
Air is Softer, and the
Morning more Fragrant than Ever…
*Elizabeth Lawrence
Darcy Kiefel, World Photography
Humanitarian Photojournalist
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